Illustration depicting a phone with a scam call concept.

There’s a recorded call on your business phone line from someone claiming to be a Google representative. They’d like you to contact them about your local business listing because, after all, don’t you want to be found more easily online? They can fix some things up for you in no time and you’ll find yourself ranking higher and higher.

Except it’s all a lie. They’re not from Google.

They’re from an agency making illegal calls to dupe small business owners into buying their services by pretending to be Google. Once you give up sensitive information to these sources such as credit card info or passwords, there’s no telling what kind of havoc they might create. And fixing that is the last thing a small business owner needs on their plate.

It can be hard to spot the difference in such calls, so don’t let your business be the next victim. Simply put: Google does not robocall. An actual call from the real Google will feature a live person – not a recording. Similarly, an email from Google will end in “@google.com.”

Truth be told, the Google robocalling scam isn’t the only one out there but one of the more popular ones (we’ve heard everything from the IRS to Microsoft). Most of the time, the common thread all of these suspicious calls have is that there are not “live” human beings making the call.

If you receive a robocall, hang up immediately and do not press any buttons to go into a menu. If the problem persists, you can block the number on your phone as well as visit www.donotcall.gov to register your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry.